Yesterday I was at the Oregon coast and I walked barefoot in the sand. I retained a strong kinisthetic body memory of the sensation of walking in the sand, and on a whim, decided that when I went to sleep, I would use the sensation of walking on the beach to create a dream environment where I could do internal work.

As I drifted to sleep, I allowed my body to recall in intimate detail the experience of walking on the sand. Using that sensation, I allowed myself to put together a dream environment of the beach I’d been walking on, with myself being the only person walking on it. Then as I walked in the dream, I began meditating on the particular issues I wanted to work through. Because I was using the physical sensation of walking in the sand as my baseline, it made it easier to build other physical sensations into the dream, such as touching my tongue to the palate of mouth, while doing Taoist breathing.

I remembered my dream in the morning and a fair amount of the details of the inner work I did. Doing this work helped me to feel more at peace about a couple issues I’m working through. It will certainly be useful to draw on this technique in further depth.